Haunted
by HawthornBlood141
Summary: Hermione goes alone to Australia to retrieve her parents, and Ron his left to ponder. Ron/Hermione. Post-War. Ron's POV.


**A/N : Thank you Ari, for enduring my quirks and correcting my grammar and such.**

**Disclamer : I don't own anything HP apart from books and dvds...**

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Hermione brings more than just her parents home from Australia. She brings herself back.

When she left she was a tired haunted girl.

He had wanted to go with her.

So much.

But Merlin knows how stubborn Hermione is and despite the fact that they rowed for days about it, he eventually, very reluctantly, caved in.

He gets it.

Why she wanted to go by herself. She needed to do it alone, "This is a part of who I am, that I have been forgetting. I don't want to forget, it's my world. _My parents,"_ she had told him with a scratchy voice and angry tears rolling down her cheeks. It sounded barmy to him, yet he understood. And his family needed him, even though she is his family too now.

He got it, but he still didn't want to let her out of his sight. Not so soon after the end of the war.

He misses her the minute she leaves and spends all his time trying to keep himself occupied so that he can ignore the void burning his chest, the dread of not knowing where she is and if she is taking good care of herself. He knows she is good at taking care of others, but Merlin forbid, she forgets how to take care of herself.

He spends his days helping George put back the shop together, degnoming the garden, learning how to cook so that he can spend time with his mother, playing Quiddich with Harry and Ginny, organizing the shed with his dad - he learns more about muggle artifacts and falls more in love with Hermione at every discovery.

Days are easy because he is always moving. His nights though, those are harder. When he finally lies still on his bed, the pillows still faintly smelling of Hermione, his brain is occupied only by thoughts of her.

She's all he sees in at night. Because he is in the bed, where they undressed each other for the first time, and because he is so bloody horny, all he can think of is Hermione's bare body against his. He dreams of tangled sheets, remembers the devious smiles he only just discovered that she gives, he hears her laugh and his name breathlessly leaving her lips as he enters her. Usually, after those nights, he wakes up with a throbbing hard-on and it takes him way too little time, picturing Hermione's breast bouncing on top of him, to find his release within the loneliness of his bed.

Some nights though, what he hears are her gut-wrenching screams, the smell and the coldness of the damp cellar, and he remembers how hopeless he felt when he couldn't reach her. _When he couldn't save her_. Those nights, he wakes up shaking and covered in sweat, his throat sore and his heart racing. He can never go back to sleep afterwards.

Then one day, she's home.

He is washing the dishes the muggle way, because it gives him something to do, when he sees her across the yard where she apparated moments before. She starts walking toward the house and his body sighs with relief.

She is wearing a yellow sundress that fits her perfectly. She looks well fed and more rested than he's seen her in years. And all he wants to do is run outside, hold her and never let go.

So he does.

And he reaches her within seconds, crushing his body against hers and his lips finding hers instinctively.

When they part, his hands find her hair and he leans his forehead against hers. She smells like coconut and the sun, and his heart swells. She's _home_.

She moves to press her head against his neck, he can feel her heart beating fast against his ribcage and he tries very hard to imprint this moment within the depth of his memory.

"Hi," she says breathlessly, laying a small kiss on his collarbone.

He laughs, her voice so natural against his skin. He feels calmer now. He hadn't realized how on edge he was until now, until he finally has her back in his arms.

"Hi yourself," he replies softly.

She lifts her head and seeks his eyes. Despite how happy he is that she is back, he is, more than he'd care to admit, very afraid of what he'll find once his gaze reaches her eyes.

When she left, she was a tired haunted girl. She had needed to go restore her parent's lives so she could find herself again. In another life, he'd have been too proud to admit it, but it pained him to realize that he was not enough for her recovery. Before she left, they had talk for hours at night, naked skin brushing each other. More than just their bodies were laid bare during those nights. They didn't hold back their feelings, their insecurities. The war had taught them that.

He looks at her. Her eyes are soft and kind, the familiar chocolate brown he's always loved. He's searching her eyes, and finds what he is looking for. That spark that the war took away. That spark that he only got glimpses of since the end of the battle, only ignited by him within the privacy of their lovemaking.

But he sees it now, which means she's on her way to be whole again. And he is too.

He's not delusional, he knows they will never be fully whole again. Years of fighting off dark magic and Voldemort took too much from them.

But he can now imagine glimpses of their future together. His heart races. The tips of his fingertips tingle as he takes her hand. His face breaks into an elated grin. And as he looks at her grinning back at him, so happy, so _here_, he can't help himself. He pictures a house filled with books in every nooks, excursions on brooms her laugh in the wind, red bushy haired _kids... _Fundamentally, he sees her, next to him, as they grow old together.

And it's blissfully blinding.


End file.
